Star Wars Cinematic Universe

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, basically he would make a movie about midichlorians as actual characters? So, like, Osmosis Jones: Star Wars edition?

I can't wait to see the crazy fanboys who adore the prequels and believe Lucas can do no wrong defend this one.

[Daikun]

Episode IX trailer

[Dr. Insomniac]

[Daikun]

R.I.P. Peter Mayhew

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, while we debate in the comic book movies thread about who holds most fault for the treatment of Stan Lee in his final few years (hint: any and all parties involved) and berate Disney for their modern day corporate cynicism, allow me to further indulge in said corporate cynicism.....that segway sounds fucking horrible now that I type it out....

Anyways, trailer just dropped: https://youtu.be/aOC8E8z_ifw

I have to admit, I had zero interest in this project going in since despite it's title, I only care about Mandalorians from The Old Republic lore. That said, this has seemingly feature-film level production value for a direct-to-streaming show. I also really like the visual framing of some of these shots. While I vastly prefer the MCU's output to modern Star Wars if I'm being honest, I have to give the Star Wars side of Disney credit for seemingly allowing it's filmmakers more creative freedom in their directing styles and choices in cinematography. Though, apparently not too much creative freedom considering that Lord and Miller got fired from Solo for being "too weird."

[Rynnec]

I'm a big Fett/Bounty Hunter fanboy, so this shit is right up my alley. TBF, it's honestly the only Star Wars thing I've been particularly been looking forward to, fun space-faring adventures and cool battles are the only things I care for in Star Wars.

[Foggle]

I really hope this isn't another case like Rogue One where the trailer looks awesome and the finished product ends up boring the shit out of me, but The Mandalorian looks pretty great, and the production values/filmmaking give me hope that Disney will continue releasing good streaming series like the Netflix ones from the past few years despite everything.

Well, while we debate in the comic book movies thread about who holds most fault for the treatment of Stan Lee in his final few years (hint: any and all parties involved)

Correct!

[Dr. Insomniac]

You know, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3 were pretty dumb movies. Sure, they were fun, and the main antagonist stole every scene he was in, but the story is so insane. Characters coming back from the dead for no real reason. Villains turning into heroes than back to villains in only a couple scenes, then getting killed because the films found another underused British actor to be a side villain. A travel plot with fun visuals and some decent world-building but little that develops the characters the studio spent three movies on. All culminating in a final battle where the brooding lead gives up his life for his girlfriend, but he's undead now, so it's okay. They even bury some treasure, to remind you how far and how little the cast have learned throughout their journeys, with the emphasis on the little.

Oh, silly me. This is the wrong thread. I'm sure nothing I described above also applies to Rise of Skywalker.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Rise of Skywalker was bad. Like, not Phantom Menace bad, where the movie is just badly made, but more like Disney panic mode bad where they tried so hard to cram so much story and fan-service into one movie to try and appease people after The Last Jedi was so polarizing, that not only did they just flat out ignore that movie's existence, but made a movie that essentially tried to be two J. J. Abrams sequels in one. Also, a lot of the plot twists in this movie are so fucking stupid that I legitimately wonder if they were done ironically as a fuck you to the fans for all of the backlash from previous movies.

Essentially we got a pretty incoherent mess of a movie. I had mixed feelings on TLJ, but I would have much rather had them commit to that direction than give us what we got here.

[Daikun]

I think it's safe now to declare Disney's Star Wars a failed experiment.

The Force Awakens was just average; a retread of the previous films.
Rogue One had spectacular action scenes, but cookie-cutter characters.
The Last Jedi was an overblown mess.

I ignored Solo since TLJ left a bad taste in my mouth and after hearing the polarizing opinions of The Rise of Skywalker, it's pretty clear that Disney has no idea what they're doing.
EDIT: A few days later, the opinions seem to be less "polarizing" and really more negative.

Oh, wait. They kinda do. They mainly bought Lucasfilm to make bank on the merchandise. They don't really have a clear roadmap or vision for Star Wars, unlike the MCU.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I still say, on average, the sequels were better than the prequels. And from everything I've heard of what Lucasfilm planned to do with Star Wars had Disney not bought the license, like Star Wars: Detours or Lucas' midichlorian-heavy sequels, I don't think the alternative would have been preferable.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

People give the MCU (and Kevin Feige) shit for being too heavy on using current movies to build up other movies. To an extent I can agree with that criticism in certain cases, like in Age of Ultron when it was overdone to the point of disrupting the flow and pacing of that movie's story. However, I'd also argue that they've gotten better at doing that over time to the point where it comes off as more seamless story-telling between movies that paints a much larger picture when viewed as a whole. Civil War did a great job of setting up Black Panther and Spider-Man (and technically the new Black Widow movie coming out) while also setting the stage of the MCU for Infinity War and Endgame. It's that kind of vision that made the build-up for those movies feel worth it, and the payoff lived up to that build-up for the most part.

Star Wars, at least the main Episode 7-9 trilogy, could have really benefited from that unifying vision. You could've still allowed for more tonal variety and have different directors on board, but make sure they are building towards the same goal. Instead, we got an alright first movie that was mostly set-up, a polarizing second movie that tossed out most of that set-up, and a hot mess of a third movie which was completely reactionary to the fallout of the second one, that literally ignores almost all of it's plot points which itself refuted the first film. This movie feels like Abrams tried to cram a whole new saga of Star Wars movies into one.

It really hits at it's worst when the movie tries desperately to have it's emotional beats. Literally none of them work. Kylo's arc doesn't have nearly enough time to breathe to make his development in this film feel natural. Rey, Finn, and Poe barely interacted that much in the previous two movies, so that sense of comradery that the movie wants to convince you that they have falls flat. Their big "emotional" group hug at the end feels so forced and disingenuous. And Emperor Palpatine isn't even a character in this movie. He's a plot function that was clearly thrown in at the last minute because Rian Johnson got rid of the guy who was clearly meant to be the main antagonist.

And the desperate fan-service constantly being thrown at us was cringe-worthy. Again, Infinity War and Endgame were also crammed with fan-service, but those movies actually earned those moments through the story-telling of previous films, while also integrating them into their stories in clever ways for the most part. It resonated because beyond being fan-service, those spots and moments had an extra layer of meaning behind them for fans. The fan-service in TROS was literally the exact thing that 'member berries were created to mock.

I still say, on average, the sequels were better than the prequels. And from everything I've heard of what Lucasfilm planned to do with Star Wars had Disney not bought the license, like Star Wars: Detours or Lucas' midichlorian-heavy sequels, I don't think the alternative would have been preferable.

As much as I have massive issues with the sequel trilogy, the plethora of idiots who have convinced themselves that the prequels were actually good genuinely astonishes me. They were pieces of shit back then, and they still suck today. The new movies having their own slew of problems doesn't somehow make Midichlorians or Anakin monologuing about sand some kind of writing genius all of a sudden.

I have mixed feelings on TLJ, but you'd have to be doing some pretty hardcore mental gymnastics to claim that it's a worse movie than something like TPM.

And all of this criticism of how Disney has made Star Wars more about commercialism and merchandising to make money is genuinely hilarious to me. First of all: no shit, Disney is a business and they have literally done this for decades. It's also funny, though, because the idea that Star Wars was somehow less commercialized in Lucas's hands is some of the most downright willful ignorance that I've ever seen. Do a quick Google or YouTube search and you'll find literally dozens upon dozens of commercials and ads for hundreds of different Star Wars products being marketed to tie in with the prequel movies, not to mention the various video games and Extended Universe content of that era.

Like, people can enjoy or dislike whatever they want, but pretending like Star Wars (or any big franchise) being milked as products by corporations is somehow a new concept is like pretending that Donald Trump is the first shady and unethical President that we've ever had.

[Dr. Insomniac]

And Emperor Palpatine isn't even a character in this movie.

While Palpatine's an entertaining villain to watch, he's never been a deep character. Not just in the movies, but in both expanded universes, he's always been a single-minded character who never had any real interests outside of killing people, corrupting people, and taking power. Sure, he was always meant to be a force of nature instead of a character we're supposed to see in our own shoes, but even Hitler had hobbies, interests, and loves in his life. Maybe it's the fault of previous SW media for doing nothing to expand Palp's personality or life so it could have sounded natural here, but TROS' big reveal is soap opera in its execution. And that's saying something for a franchise with more bad plot twists than good.

And though I agree the sequels could have used a unifying vision, I can understand the hesitancy since the prequels had an ending in mind from the very beginning, for Anakin to become Darth Vader, yet they screwed that up. Also because the producers behind the MCU only figured out where they were going to take the Infinity arc some time after the first Avengers movie came out. Whedon said in an interview he put Thanos in the post-credits scene without any long-term goal in mind. I think Lucasfilm let every sequel director wing it because that's pretty much how Lucas handled the original trilogy, but the studio forgot there was a lot of trial and error there (so much it ruined Lucas' marriage) and made the larger story an odd watch (ESB and ROTJ retroactively turn Obi-Wan into a habitual liar who withheld some really useful information from Luke).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

When I say unifying vision I don't necessarily mean that every step had to be planned out from the get-go. I'm aware that the MCU had a lot of writers winging it all the way through the Infinity Saga. That said, Feige worked with the various writers and directors to make sure that their vision would progress toward the goals he had in mind for the franchise, and through that was able to build a satisfying arc of movies leading to a solid conclusion. It's fine to not have had a definitive conclusion in mind when they were making TFA, but by TLJ it may have helped if Kathleen Kennedy had made sure that the movie was building toward some sort of conclusion rather than just doing it's own thing when it was clearly the middle chapter of a trilogy. I don't have any issue with Rian Johnson making the kind of movie that he wanted to make, but undoubtedly it works better as a stand-alone affair than as part of an established mainline series.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Makes you wonder how Colin Trevorrow would have handled Episode IX, before Lucasfilm fired him after seeing the reactions to Book of Henry.